


Mysticism

by nickomalley



Category: Arctic Monkeys
Genre: Death, M/M, Matt's crazy lol, Murder, Rewrite, Russian Roulette, i dont wanna give it away, just imagine sias matt and am alex, or humbug alex, whichever floats your boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 07:19:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10692369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickomalley/pseuds/nickomalley
Summary: The gun is back in Alex’s hand. He feels a little more confident now as he reminds himself,The gun isn’t loaded, Alex. Just pull the trigger. He’ll just laugh it off like he always does when he fools you.





	Mysticism

**Author's Note:**

> wow hi 
> 
> so i originally wrote a story just like this about 3 years ago!! but 3 years ago i was like 14 and i had to write the story for a vocab test in my freshman english class so it sucked!!!!! 
> 
> so anyway now im 17 and ive learned more about writing or whatever and ive gotten a little better so i just decided, hey why not rewrite the whole thing??!!! 
> 
> anyway, hope you like it.
> 
> ((also how tf do you indent on here??? smh))

When Alex is standing in the dark alley, his eyes fail to make out the details of the man in front of him. It’s far too dim, and standing in shadows of tall buildings doesn’t help much.

It’ not that he doesn’t know who's in front of him. Because he does. He knows him like the back of his hand. 

He’s a man only slightly larger than Alex. About the same height, dimples, large eyes, and a damned sinister smile, if Alex had ever seen one. 

He’s his best friend. Or, so he tells himself. 

“Are you ready?” The man in front asks. He’s crowding Alex against the wet brick of the outside of someone’s apartment. He has a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder, gripping tight enough to leave bruises. 

The silver muzzle of the gun is cold against the soft, tender area under his jaw. It jabs in deep, likely imprinting a ring into the skin. 

“Matt-” Alex panics now, thinking that maybe this game is getting to be too risky, more so than before. He sucks in a deep breath before rushing out, “I- I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Matt smiles, and Alex can only tell because he sees the moonlight bouncing off of his white teeth. A single smile in the dark, and Alex is immediately reminded of Alice and the Cheshire Cat, though he’s left wishing their encounter was as innocent. “It’s too late to back out now, Al.” He hears the click of the hammer being pulled back, and Matt’s finger rests right on the trigger. 

Suddenly, all Alex can think about is anything but this moment. He thinks about when he met Matt just years prior. He was normal then. He worked, he went grocery shopping, he loosened his tie as soon as he walked through his front door and kicked off shoes to watch whatever commercials were on the television. 

He was normal then.

He thinks about how he used to go to college, how he studied hard just to drop out. How he was nearly done, too. So, so close to getting his degree. 

All until he met Matt. 

Then Matt stopped going to work. Stopped getting dressed every morning. Stopped leaving his apartment for anything other than a pack of cigarettes and a case of cheap beer. 

That was when it all started to change. He’s sure of it.

He notes the make of the revolver in Matt’s hand. It’s a Ruger Redhawk from the 1980s. 44 magnum, or 357 magnum. God, he can’t remember. He’s held it many times before, but he can’t tell. It’s too dark and his mind is racing. He thinks minutes have passed but really it has only been a few seconds. 

He’s dragging out the time between the gun digging into his jaw to Matt pulling the trigger, and for a moment he thinks he’s already dead. 

He hears the gun click. He hears Matt laugh. He hears his pulse, feels his heart pounding. 

Alex wasn’t sure when he closed his eyes, but when he opens them, Matt’s dark figure is a little easier to make out. He can see Matt’s open mouth, but can also make out the deep dimples around it. 

“Scared, were you?” Matt asks rhetorically. He always knows the answer. Sometimes, Alex thinks that Matt knows him better than he knows himself. 

The chamber of the gun is spun, and Alex’s relief is short-lived as he watches Matt press the gun into his own hand. “I want you to do it,” he says, and Alex feels the anxiety wash over him all over again. 

“Me?” 

“Who else?” 

No. No, he can’t do this. He can’t be the one to pull the trigger he can’t-

He’s pressing the gun against Matt’s temple. He still has that crazed smile plastered on his face. Alex’s hand shakes and he accidentally hits Matt in the head, making him jerk away. 

“See,” Alex says, drawing the gun from his friend’s head. “I can’t do it.” 

But somehow he ends up with the gun back to Matt’s head anyway. He scans the shadowed face in front of him, for a second all he sees is the white teeth, and a small glimmer from Matt’s eyes that immediately disappears as he angles his head downwards. 

But Alex is quick. If anything is going to happen, he wants it to happen fast. He tries to angle the gun so that if a bullet does come out, it doesn’t come out into Matt’s brain. But he’s caught, and now Matt is holding the barrel of the gun, while Alex is still holding the grip, pressing it right up against his own head. 

Again, the gun clicks. 

For a moment, the thought of it is a little disappointing to Alex. He doesn’t want Matt to die, of course. But now the bullet has a chance of coming out into his head instead.

* * *

_  
When Matt stopped going to work, Alex started staying over at Matt’s apartment. They’d sit on the couch, at the table, on the kitchen counters, on the floor. They’d roll joints and sip beer, light cigarettes and let the entire apartment fill with smoke. It made their lungs feel heavy, then._

_When Alex noticed Matt was different than just last month, he had walked into Matt’s bedroom, taking note of the two guns on his messy bed. He also noted the collection of beer cans and bottles on the floor, the cigarette ashes that littered the nightstand._

_“Matt?” He wandered into the room, just past the open door, when he felt Matt’s hand grab his shoulder and spin him around._

_He stood there in his white tank top, a stain on the chest from spilling beer on himself. But-_

_Alex had to be seeing things. Beer wasn’t red._

_His eyes focused on the red stain on the front of Matt’s shirt. Matt watched him, and laughed when he saw Alex’s confusion._

_Alex finally looked at Matt’s face and saw the dry blood from his nose and his lip. He watched it crack and flake off, and invited more blood to spill, as he smiled. His teeth were tinged red, and that was the first time Alex came face-to-face with the man that wasn’t his best friend.  
_

* * *

The gun clicks again. Alex wonders how he has gotten lucky enough to cheat death so many times. Perhaps it’s Matt’s doing. 

_The gun probably isn’t even loaded_ , he thinks to himself. _Matt doesn’t want to die, and he wouldn’t try to kill me._ He lets out a small chuckle.

The gun is back in Alex’s hand. He feels a little more confident now as he reminds himself, _The gun isn’t loaded, Alex. Just pull the trigger. He’ll just laugh it off like he always does when he fools you_. 

He presses the muzzle to the underside of Matt’s jaw, like he’d done to Alex earlier. He presses it in deep, pretending to play some macho role that he knows Matt will get a kick out of. 

But, for some reason, Matt isn’t laughing. He’s not commenting on Alex’s facade. He’s not even darting his eyes around like he usually does. 

He’s staring right into Alex’s eyes. And Alex can tell now that he can see the white of Matt’s eyes reflecting in the moonlight.

He pulls the hammer back until it clicks into place. Matt is stoic nonetheless. 

“You okay?” Alex asks as his finger snakes into the trigger guard and rests lightly on the trigger itself. 

Matt doesn’t move, just mutters a _“pull the trigger.”_

* * *

_  
“Why’re you bloody?” Alex asked, eyes darting from his friend’s face to the stained wife-beater._

_“I hit the door on my way in,” he says, nonchalantly “I got a few beers in the fridge, come on.” Alex noticed the limp as Matt walked away._

_Exiting the hall, Alex noticed the dusty backpack by the couch that wasn’t there when he walked in. He also noticed the dark stains on that, too. “What were you **really** up to, Matthew?” He walked into the kitchen area where Matt stood bent over, head in the fridge, fishing past leftover takeout to reach the cold beers in the back. _

_“I told you, Al,” He stood up and slammed the door shut, “I hit the door.”_

_For a moment, Alex though he’d made him mad. So he took a step back and hesitated to take the beer from Matt’s hand._

_Then, Matt smiled. “I’m okay.” He tapped his temple with the mouth of the brown bottle in his hand, raised an eyebrow. “I’m okay,” he repeated, “I promise.”_

* * *

The result is unexpected. For several moments, Alex doesn't know what happened. He stands with his arm still extended, his finger still holding the trigger down, his eyes still straight ahead where Matt’s eyes should be staring back at him. 

And then, “Oh,” Alex gasps, “Oh my God.” He looks down and sees the body of the man who’d stood alive just moments ago. Alex is shaking now, and he drops the gun as he falls to his knees. 

“Matt,” he cries out, unable to tear his eyes from the lifeless, bloody face of his friend. He grabs Matt’s jacket and tries to shake him, as if he’s trying to stir him from a nap. “No,” he’s crying, hands twisted in the other’s shirt, patting his face to get him to do something, _anything_ , but all he manages to do is get blood on his own hand. “No. No, no, no…” It becomes like a mantra, and it flows out just as fast as his tears. 

The image to anyone else is just a man crouching over someone. In the dark, no one can see the blood, or the gun, or the tears. No one knows that they were playing a game. 

No one saw him murder his best friend. 

And Alex stays kneeling there, his own hands coated in the blood of Matt, clenching the jacket and t-shirt that his lifeless body wears. His forehead rests on Matt’s chest as he sobs. 

“You knew it,” he breathes out, “you knew what was going to happen.”

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on the tumblr siasmatt.tumblr.com (thats my matt blog thats ran from a queue hahaa) or n-ckomalley.tumblr.com (the main).


End file.
